The annual Facebook charity auction #dominicstrong in support of the Alberta Children’s Hospital will begin today at 5 p.m. and conclude Sunday at 5 p.m.

“You have to be on Facebook, that’s the most important thing,” says #dominicstrong co-ordinator Sean Rooney. “You then go to our page #dominicstrong Facebook group. You ask to be added to the group and I will add you within seconds. Then there is a photo album in there pinned to the top of the page.

“Every photo in the photo album is an item up for auction. The way you bid is to comment. When you bid on an item, you will then get ongoing notifications for that item until the auction closes on Sunday.”

The charity auction was started three years ago to honour the memory of Rooney’s infant son Dominic, who lost his two-year fight with leukemia in 2015. Last year the auction raised $10,000 for the Alberta Children’s Hospital, where Dominic spent most of the last year of his life.

“The way I like to tell people is this is how you parent a child who has passed away,” says Rooney. “Any parent who has suffered a loss like this does it in different ways, but this is how we have chosen to do it, to keep his name alive and do good things in his memory; as we think he would have done.”

Rooney says he and his wife Trish are grateful for the community’s ongoing support of their charitable efforts in the name of their son.

“This community never ceases to amaze me,” he says. “We were deluged with donations ourselves as a family when we went public with Dominic’s illness. The success of this online auction the past three years is a good reminder of how generous this community is.”